Snapchat is fighting for the right to take selfies at voting booths

A legal battle is raging in the US about whether you should be
able to take a selfie at the voting booth this November.

Snapchat, the social network that's synonymous with selfies, is
fighting a recent ban of ballot selfies in New Hampshire. The
California-based startup filed its
first amicus court brief last week in which it argues that
sharing selfies while voting is protected under the First
Amendment.

"Ballot selfies are the latest in a long historical tradition of
voters sharing their civic enthusiasm—and their votes—with their
social networks," Snapchat's lawyers argued.

On a state-by-state basis, the legal repercussions of taking
photos at the voting booth are quite varied.
The Huffington Post compiled each state's stance, and
found a wide range of rules and repercussions.

Snapchat's home state of California, for instance, says that
taking photos while voting is prohibited, but doesn't
mention any kind of punishment for doing so. Vermont,
on the other hand, can fine you $1,000 if you allow
your ballot "to be seen by another person with an apparent
intention of letting it be known how he or she is about to
vote.”

States that oppose photography at the ballot box do so
to protect the secrecy of the decision. The main argument is that
sharing one's vote could lead to voting fraud or
manipulation. “Whether an exchange of money, or for
having to live with someone or some other fear, you don’t want
anyone to go into that booth and end up voting for someone they
didn’t really want to vote for, but felt they didn’t want to pay
that price for whatever reason," New Hampshire secretary of
state Bill Gardner
told The New York Times.

Besides the fact that Snapchat wants people sharing as much
as possible in its app, the company has a special interest in
covering politics. Snapchat has a small team of journalists led
by former CNN correspondent Peter Hamby who assist in making
crowd-sourced "live stories" in the app around debates, election
primaries, and so on. Hamby also
hosts a Snapchat-produced politics show for
the 2016 election exclusively in the app.

The New Hampshire court battle is, of course, specific to
New Hampshire — the idea behind fighting it there is, if Snapchat
wins, it could set a legal precedent nationwide.

"Given Snapchat’s largely user-generated approach to news
coverage, the company has a unique concern about laws that
purport to block regular people from capturing and sharing
content that comments on issues of the day," its amicus
brief reads. "Such laws impose real restrictions on expression
and newsgathering as they have evolved in the 21st century."